Why I could not enjoy Starfield

 I have been a longtime Bethesda game fan. Their Elder Scrolls and Fallout games haven't been the greatest, and often are deeply flawed, but each had its own unique charm that Starfield lacked, which is the core of why I just could not enjoy it, so let's do a retrospective. Be advised, will contain spoilers.

Arena was the first Elder Scrolls, and I'll admit, never really got into it. It was clearly a game that was more a tech demo experiment repurposed from a completely different game concept (it was to be generic arena fighter before it became an open-world RPG prototype), and it had some really cool ideas married to horrible balance, a game engine that was clunky even when it first released for DOS, and wasn't even a true open world game, the open world being more a series of looping randomized maps with some unique dungeons. That said, even then it had a few good ideas I hope to see fleshed out in a better game.

Daggerfall was my first RPG love. Sure, it was even MORE ambitious than Arena (technically smaller in size, shrunk from all of Tamriel to just High Rock and Hammerfell), had half its features busted, and was so buggy the devs had to release official debug tools so legit players could attempt to keep their saves from corrupting and overall was writing checks it couldn't cash, but it was the first game I could see the intent Arena wanted to realize. It was a way more complex story of political intrigue, the open world was truly functional this time, the 3D was crude but profound for 1996 DOS, and the world finally attained more depth than the super generic "high fantasy quest" cliche that Arena was.

Morrowind, though, is when I really became a hardcore player and learned the joys of game mods. Morrowind was a far smaller game, just a portion of Morrowind, but it was a beautifully rendered area with exquisite hand-drawn art, 3D that actually started looking pretty good, a kudzu nest of all sorts of interesting plots from mundane to fantastical, incredibly unique enemies and set pieces, and had the first set of mod tools and support for player mods that made game modding widely accessible. It suffered from bad leveling mechanics, and wooden animations, and felt like it was trying to crowbar a lot of tabletop game rules into a computer game, but mods fixed that pretty quick. OpenMW still continues to make it a blast to rediscover and have fun with on modern computers and its engine has no limits on mod amounts either.

Oblivion was somewhat of a step back but still kept me hooked. While the plot falls back on a real cliche world-ending story plot, the new face engine was hilariously bad (and often looked worse than the Morrowind heads that were hand-drawn albeit consistent), a lot of the new-fangled ideas like Radiant AI and the Havok physics were badly implemented (though often in hilarious ways), and the main setting of Cyrodiil was super cliche, but it still had a lot of good sides. Combat was no longer clunky (in the old-school jank sense), animations were actually decent, the game looked beautiful with the right tweaks, and a lot of the writing for some of the quests was some of the best ever done in the series to date.

Skyrim basically fixed all my complaints about Oblivion and while mods for Oblivion were okay, the modding scene really hit its zenith here. To this day it's my go-to game, and remarkably, while the other games need a lot of patches to fix a lot of issues, Skyrim is perfectly playable with little more than some bugfix patches out of the box. On the other hand, the writing took a SEVERE nosedive in some areas, with a Companions questline that clearly had been chopped down and left a frail shell of itself, the Thieves Guild plot was really dense from start to finish, and a lot of the game quests loved to railroad you into doing other quests whether you liked them or not. That said, a lot of them were really good, with many sidequests being quite interesting, the opening of the game made excellent meme fuel and was well scripted, and the game really sold your character as a total gigachad as opposed to some random who just happen to be more because someone gave them a leg up first.

Fallout 3 was the first Fallout by Bethesda, and yeah, it was kinda crud in many ways. Buggy, was clearly a bad hack of Oblivion mechanics with goofy gun designs and animations, and the plot wasn't super deep or complicated. However, it really knew how to sell the post-apocalyptic wasteland well, and while the main plot was meh, some of the side stories were pretty good, and I loved the Point Lookout DLC.

Fallout New Vegas was much better. It felt more like an actual sequel to Fallout 2, it had a sweet post-apocalyptic western feel, and it really did an even better job than 3 of reminding me why I loved the Interplay era Fallouts. Sure, it was notoriously buggy and needed a lot of mods to patch up the parts that were clearly not finished (it was effectively a Fallout 3 hack done in under two years), but it still is one game I will reinstall and play out of sheer love for its fun factor. The DLCs were nigh uniformly excellent and totally worth it.

Honorable mention to Tale of Two Wastelands, the fan mod that puts Fallout 3 and New Vegas in the same game (with the former in the latter game's engine and modified so the two games can tie into each other). It's a fan project but done so well that it drew praise from the New Vegas devs.

Fallout 4 was something of a step down in some ways and a step up in others. The main plot is essentially Fallout 3 in reverse, the stock story has a lot of railroaded hand-holding, and the settlement mechanics is kinda of basic and underbaked by default. The writing also has some issues, with some sidequests being beyond ridiculous and many of the main factions felt cut down in the same manner as did some of Skyrims. On the other hand, the gunplay was amazing, many of the DLC fixed a lot of complaints and were worth the price (though the Creation Club is overpriced nickel and diming with variable quality and regrettably they have yet to package all of it in an Anniversary style package for one lump purchase instead of the Creation Club). Modders were able to make it fairly enjoyable, at least, when Bethesda's updates weren't breaking compatibility to a much worse extent than happened to Skyrim players who used mods. 

That all said, despite the worst all the above games could reach, and they could get pretty bad, they all had some kind of charm that got me interested. Starfield, however, is when I finally could not enjoy a Bethesda game and even wound up hating it, let me explain why by breaking it down into categories.

1. Story

Starfield has the most boring setup for a story ever. You're a miner, you discover a weird glowing artifact, you get approached by a group looking into them to join, find they want to look at them for vague reasons, and that's about it.

Morrowind had a cool setup where you are sent by order of the Emperor to a part of Tamriel disconnected from the rest for vague reasons but you know off the bat whatever the reasons, he and a lot of very important people immediately get very interested in your arrival, and there is a huge tangled web of factions to deal with, and the villain faction gets awards for both trying to recruit and kill you, for reasons that make sense from both sides. Oblivion had the same Emperor charge you with his dying breath for saving Tamriel from what amounted to a demonic invasion built up very well from the get-go. Fallout 3/Vegas/4 had you searching for someone and that party was tied into a lot of things far bigger than you realized and made you a very important tipper of the scales for several factions with high stakes all around. Skyrim had a civil war about to tear Skyrim apart and dragons trying to kill everyone with no apparent end. Even Daggerfall had Game of Thrones-level intrigue going for it and Arena wins points for attempting to make a plot that involves spanning an entire world to stop someone who is otherwise invincible unless you hunt down what you need to stop them like the classic Ultima.

As for Starfield, none of this mystery or ambition exists. The purpose of the artifacts you are looking for remains vague, with the game essentially ending by rewinding time to let you New Game Plus. There are more questions than answers and the few answers you do get leave a bunch more questions. Unlike the mystery of what happened to the Dwemer in Elder Scrolls, not only is this not interesting, it mistakes mysterious for compelling. What happened to the Dwemer was compelling because it was well well-developed mystery with a lot you could piece together yet missing a few specific details endlessly speculated on in-universe between games.

Starfield's artifacts essentially let become the Dragonborn (Starborn) without any of the epic fights with dragons or any sense of epic adventure, it's more to give an excuse for the plot to exist than feeling organic, as the dragons were a constant threat whether you hunted down their powers or not. Starfield, by contrast, you could ignore the main plot and have more fun that way because the main plot was completely railroaded and basically only existed so the much-touted New Game Plus feature could make little changes between play sessions that still force you to redo most of the actual fun of the gameplay loop from scratch.

The factions who want the artifacts and the power of the Starborn are pretty generic, lacking any of the flavor of the Enclave and Brotherhood from Fallout or the Thalmor versus the worshipers of Talos. At least in the Fallout example, they had rich lore and good reasons to be opposed that were eminently logical and made you interested. The Thalmor had that whole Elven Nazi thing going and the religious persecution for reasons that are implied to be far worse than simple religion hate at least made the Thalmor memorable. By contrast, in the main good guy group, Constellation, their goals are super vague besides "let's find more artifacts" to find out more about them, making them a fetch quest on the scale of an entire game faction. As for the villains, they were bland. As in, I struggle to remember anything more about them than they existed. The Powder Gangers of New Vegas were a minor early game faction, but I remember them after more than a decade after the game debuted because they were a very memorable faction that had a fun escaped convict who liked dynamite theme.

The side quests were either more radiant quest-style cookie cutter nonsense meant to pad out your playtime for the most part, made worse by the fact most of the game world outside the unique areas is randomly generated in the worst way. Specifically, it's a bunch of interchangeable worlds based off stock templates that get old FAST. Unlike No Man's Sky, which was entirely procedurally generated but worked hard to make it all interesting to explore anyway, Starfield's side material is tediously dull.

In short, the story was a cure for insomnia and did not impress me.

Graphics: Now, Bethesda has always had a problem of their stock graphics always needing some work, and that's where modders had to step in and fix things, but Starfield suffers from a far worse sin. IT'S GRAPHICAL WORK IS BORING TO LOOK AT.

Arena was a stock fantasy cliche, and their first game where they were more figuring out concepts for later, so I'll excuse it. Daggerfall had issues with being bland in some places even for its time with the procedural generation of really samey-looking dungeons and towns, but at least it felt like they were trying more than Arena and they deserve props for making an actual open-world game this time that felt like one.

Morrowind was the high point of their creative Elder Scrolls phase. It had some of the most unique designs and entirely handcrafted areas I still lovingly revisit because nigh everything oozes character. Oblivion went back to classic fantasy with the somewhat cliche Cyrodiil, but that game had some beautiful set pieces and was the first time the animations were really good. Skyrim really leans hard into the Nordic themes and I totally loved how it went full tilt into that, and the Solstheim revisit was great for some fun nostalgia for Morrowind.

On the Fallout side, Fallout 3 really sells the WASTELAND aspect of Fallout, it really felt like it was set after the end of the world. New Vegas had fun cowboys meets post-apocalyptic Vegas theme and each area really oozed character. Fallout 4 was a bit less creative, but still really sold its take on Boston and while the Institute was not the best-written faction, I loved their Blade Runner aesthetics for the synths.

Starfield, however, is just BLAND. Todd Howard called the design NASA-punk, but to be frank, IRL NASA gear looks better. The character models were hideously bad, and not in the so bad it's hilarious Oblivion fashion, they just look ugly, and unlike their earlier games, this was not due to tech limitations or early 3D, it just looked ugly. Even Skyrim and Fallout 4 proved you could make stock character models that don't look like total crap in and of themselves, so Starfield's characters looking like absolutely ugly potatoes did not help. Worse, for a game set into the far future, with advanced tech, you'd think we conquered most diseases that make you look hideous, but nope, vitiligo and other skin conditions are the norm in Starfield. Mass Effect had good-looking characters because it realized the future means most people will look better due to longer life spans and better health care than now.

The set design is little better. All the assets of most areas reeked of feeling generic like those amateur Unity and Unreal project asset flips where someone stitched together a bunch of stock assets for the design. I cannot remember any area that ever really stood out that looked unique. Morrowind had those bizarre mushroom pods and creepy Daedric shrines. Oblivion had some beautiful vistas and some really impressive architecture (I particularly loved Skingrad's grandeur and the acid trip that was the Shivering Isles), and Skyrim had its Nordic ruins and Viking themes that really made the home of the Nords resemble their inspiration. Even the Fallout games lovingly showed us their take on alternate universe real-world locations that all had loving details everywhere you looked as well as some truly inspired original places like Big MT and The Divide as well as the eerie Hell-like landscape of the Glowing Sea.

Starfield has NONE of this. All areas feel like they were afraid to make anything truly stand out, with the first major hub New Atlantis lacking the charm of Morrowind's Balmora, the lushness of the Shivering Isles from Oblivion, or the cozy feel of Whiterun from Skyrim. It even lacked any awe-inspiring scenery like in Mass Effect, where to this day the Citadel still looks amazing in all of the Mass Effect games.

Set pieces of other areas are boring. The guns and melee weapons lack any unique charms and just look cumbersome and boring. The monsters and humanoid enemies lack personality. No Man's Sky tried very hard to make sure each world didn't feel copy-pasted, which Starfield falls into the quick trap of.

Basically, the graphics did not thrill me either.

Sounds, Music, and Voice Acting:

Arena had no voice acting save the CD cutscenes, and thus I won't count against it. Daggerfall had very little save the intro and the memetic "HALT!". Morrowind had mostly sound bites from most characters, though to this day Dagoth Ur's voice acting will never be forgotten, and I love Dagoth Ur AI meme videos. Oblivion was when they started doing full voice acting, and while some was offbeat, wooden, or bland, some of it was really good. Practically all of Wes Johnson's Sheogorath was totally worth it. Skyrim never fell below "above average" for me, with the intro being a fountain of memes, the '"arrow in the knee" line being memed to death, Heimskr's rants being iconic, the Khajiit going from having bad lisps to having cool Spaniard style accents, and the Dragon language was interesting. All the Fallout games were decent at worst, with really stand-out performances by many of the main characters in each.

Starfield had some boring voice-acting work. Hardly anyone sounded like they were doing more than phoning it in. The first major character, Barret, he sounded as if someone had given Lando Calrissian a lobotomy. Billy Dee Williams is a fun guy to listen to when he acts, he's got charm and bombast. Barret sounded like someone just trying to collect a paycheck doing a very poor imitation listlessly. The second major character, Sarah, is a generic British woman 101. Everyone else just fades into the stonework, except for the good idea of bringing back the Adoring Fan VA from Oblivion, he at least was trying to inject some life into the boring world that was Starfield.

Sounds effects I'm normally not going to give too much attention unless they sound hideous, but Starfield has some of the lamest sounding guns I've ever heard. Lasers are tinny and ballistic guns largely sound like weak peashooters. Everything else was just forgettable.

As for music, Elder Scrolls has some wonderful ambient tracks, and some of their battle music like the stuff that plays when fighting dragons in Skyrim is pretty exciting. Fallout really sells itself with a mix of iconic licensed IRL music and some great ambient tracks and dramatic beats, like the dirge title theme of Fallout 3, the western-themed New Vegas intro theme, or the epic "Welcome to Boston" of Fallout 4. I considered it an ominous sign when I failed to be even remotely impressed by the Starfield title theme, and sure enough, the rest of the music is entirely forgettable.

So the sounds, voice acting, and music were also lame.

Gameplay and User Interface:

I do not ask for much from gameplay except that it be fun and not be overly complicated. Elder Scrolls requires memorizing a few keys that tend to be similar for each game and don't cramp my hands. The Fallout games take a similar approach.

Starfield had most of the same basics, and I got into it early with little trouble, at least the basic controls, but navigating the user interface is an exercise in agony because it's poorly labeled, requires tons of menus being sifted through, and when you do get information, it's presented in a hard to read fashion. Unlike the straightforward TES menus or the Pipboy menus of Fallout, both of which were easy to understand and the information was straightforward, the Starfield one by contrast is not well explained, labeled, or is easy to sort through without menu sifting constantly. Once I installed a mod to rationalize the interface into something more sensible, I finally could navigate it, though it was still a mess of submenus everywhere.

Most of the combat mechanics are basically modified Fallout 4 mechanics, and to the credit of Starfield, weren't too hard to learn. The spaceship flying mechanics, on the other hand, are a bad ripoff of No Man's Sky right down to interface design, except minus anything that made that fun and intuitive. The tutorials are brief and bit unhelpful for that as well. Also, the spaceship flight mechanics felt like a bad simulation of flight, and No Man's Sky felt much more like I was actually piloting a spacecraft. Walking and running were miserable due to some survival mechanics that can cause your character to suffer even in places with a breathable atmosphere like New Atlantis. You can turn these off generally, but you get an EXP penalty if you do.

Generally exploring was just boring. Imagine Fallout 4, but minus the allure of finding anything occasionally interesting and the environments you explore all having a lot of cookie-cutter template layouts. Made me not interested in exploring a dozen planets that all happened to have similar-looking caves, labs, and features. Handcrafted stuff in Fallout and Elder Scrolls was way more interesting, Starfield, unlike No Man's Sky, made procedural generation look really bad and unoriginal.

The crafting mechanics were annoying. Fallout had some easy-to-read menus, as did Elder Scrolls, and the requirements for crafting were generally not a chore to hunt down. The leveling system was also a step-down, being an even more chopped-down perk-based leveling system like Skyrim and Fallout, but with a really annoying sense of progression that made the game feel hard to do even when you unlocked a fair amount of the tech tree because you had to proceed through a lot of niche skills to get to the really useful ones.

Basically, the controls and interface made me want to tune out, not stick around.

My conclusion is that Starfield failed on every level to be fun. I have endured Daggerfall's jank (and Daggerfall Unity made that game fun at the potential it was intended on modern PCs), most of the other Elder Scrolls and Fallout games were fun (save Fallout 76) because I could mod out their biggest issues while polishing their good stock ideas up. Starfield, on the other hand, was just built on a bad foundation, and you can polish the turd somewhat, but it just becomes a really shiny turd because the core experience is just tedious and frustrating.